Senza Misura
by Dana Janeway
Summary: This is a companion piece to my two Star Trek: Voyager stories, "Apocrypha" and "Star of the County Down." Warnings: Dark subject matter, violence, language, femslash.
1. Prologue

Prologue

My body is on fire. She twists and turns inside of me, she knows every part of me, everything I've tried to hide, every secret, every sin. It doesn't matter. She forgives me, even if I can never forgive myself. She is electricity running through me, I want her so desperately that even when we are finished, it is never really over. She is my constant craving, my addiction and the weapon at my back, holding me prisoner.

She is never gentle on nights like this. She possesses my body, she controls me. Her mouth invades my center, and it is the most excruciating combination of pleasure and pain that I have ever experienced. She knows exactly how to bring me almost to orgasm, and then she slows down until I scream her name, begging for release. And then, when she finally gives in...

Crazy. I feel completely crazy. My mind is gone, and we are crazy together. I am wrapped in her arms, shivering, and she protects me. But there is no protection from this desperate longing, from the ache in my chest as I gaze into her spectacular black eyes.

I never want to look into another pair of eyes. I never want the touch of another hand, nor the kiss from anyone's lips but hers. She is the beginning, and the end of my desire.

"So," I say nonchalantly once I've recovered, drawing my flimsy robe around my waist and swinging my legs out of bed, "where will you go for your honeymoon?"


	2. Chapter 1

Chapter One

"Beverly, why do we have to talk about this?"

"How can we not talk about it? You've gotten engaged to the man, Deanna. I don't understand how this is possible."

I pulled her hair back from her face, holding her in my arms. Her eyes glistened in the dimly lit room, the light of the moon softly streaming through the curtains.

"You have... a genetic predisposition to honesty. And yet here you are, here _we_ are, making no move to stop deceiving everyone."

Tears formed in her eyes, and fell, and while I loathed making her cry, I could not bear to avoid reality for one more second.

"I know," she said. "I don't understand it either."

She looked away from me.

"What is it Dea?"

"You think I've stopped loving you. You think this engagement to Will means that I don't feel for you what you feel for me. Can't you see that's the farthest thing from the truth?"

She kissed my lips, softly, her open mouth merging into mine, her tongue making slow circles.

"Dea..."

"Please," she breathed. "I need you. I love you."

With all the resolve I had, I broke the kiss and forced her to look at me.

"But you won't be with me," I said. "You want me to live in your fear with you, and I won't. I do love you, too much to share you with someone else. So this has to end. I don't have to be Betazoid to sense that living a lie will destroy you one day. It's tearing you apart, Dea. And it's breaking my heart in just about a million pieces."

She put her hand on my heart, feeling it beating. "I know, sweet girl," she said, tears glistening on her cheeks. "I don't know how I've become so weak. I've abandoned everything I believe in, everything my people have stood for. Because I can't be without you, Beverly, I just don't know how."

She buried her head in my shoulder, holding me so tightly that it nearly hurt. I hung on to her in just the same manner, my hand on the back of her head, drawing her closer, as if we could, if only we tried hard enough, become one person instead of two.

"I never wanted to wait for anyone," I whispered, "but I have no choice. I would happily die a lonely old woman, rather than spend the rest of my life with someone else. But I have to let you go now, Dea. I have to let you go."


	3. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Letting go of Deanna Troi's hand, and watching her slip out the door to my apartment, was probably the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

And I don't say that lightly – I have had a fairly tumultuous life, by most standards. I have seen my share of disasters, lost many people close to me, and as a doctor I have had to watch patients die under my care, and accept the limitations of my knowledge and my power to effect change in the world.

But losing her was like nothing else I had ever experienced. No one even knew we were together – not my son, not my closest friends and family. We had been lovers in secret, never appearing in public together as anything other than colleagues, never so much as touching hands in the street.

Behind the doors to my quarters on the Enterprise, and inside my apartment in San Francisco, we knew each other inside and out. As much as it was possible to know someone, Deanna knew me. She knew my deepest insecurities, and she was somehow able to make me laugh at them, and at myself. She knew how to touch me like no one had ever touched me – it was a touch that radiated through my body, and it made me feel as if there were no barrier at all between us. We were a part of each other.

And she was going to marry someone else. Because, even in our modern age, enough prejudice against unconventional relationships existed to make her fear rejection from her family and her people. And maybe even, on some level, from Starfleet.

I didn't care about any of it. I refused to let any antiquated bigotry stand in the way of my love for her. If it had been up to me, I would have shouted it from the proverbial rooftops and over the proverbial mountains, all the way to the Q continuum and back.

All I felt now was longing and regret. I awoke each morning with a terrible pain in my chest, knowing that there would be no knock at my door, no whispered message across the com system, no flowers magically appearing at my nightstand.

The bright morning sun had lost its brightness somehow – it shone but only dimly, as if the fire that kept it alive was muted in sympathy with us. _It is not so much true that all the world loves a lover, but that a lover loves all the world._ How accurate was that tried and true saying! And how accurate, too, that a person who has known love and lost it, sees the whole world differently.

I arrived a half an hour late to work, very unusually, and I hadn't realized that it was one of the busiest days of the year. I gave the oldest Admiral in Starfleet his annual physical exam and dismissed him with a clean bill of health, promising he would outlive us all and halfway meaning it.

After that, I saw a young couple who were expecting their first child together. I watched them as they listened to the baby's heartbeat, and I wished above all else that I could share in their joy instead of adding up my own miseries.

When I showed them out, I noticed a woman in my waiting room that I had never seen before. She was not dressed in a Starfleet uniform, yet I had to think that she was an officer because my current practice did not extend beyond Starfleet personnel. My staff confirmed that she was indeed on the patient list. What was more, she looked in a terrible state. She had cuts on her face and arms, dark circles under her eyes and an unearthly pallor to her skin.

"Cassandra Weatherfield?"

Silently, she stood up and followed me into the medical bay.


	4. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

It is, I believe, one of the small tragedies of human experience that things are rarely as they appear to be. Think of anything you hold sacred; a hero, a system of values, the image of a stalwart crew of officers, making their way across the galaxy with no bitterness or recrimination between them. The eyes of history do not see beneath the surface, blinded are they by the opaque lenses of power and politics. It is only the most diligent and patient of observers who, sifting through the wreckage of dubious eyewitness accounts and shoddy journalism, might chance to discover the truth.

I left a poker game aboard the Enterprise because I realized I had fallen in love with her. I said I had a terrible headache, and I needed to take care of it as quickly as possible, and something about an early duty shift.

In my opinion, there are very few legitimate reasons to leave a poker game early; perhaps that night I stumbled upon the only one. I've asked myself many times what it was that made me understand once and for all, and I think I've narrowed it down to her inability to bluff. She could have won the last hand easily if she had only known how to keep up appearances, and when she turned over her cards with that impossibly innocent smile, half wistful and half amused, one hand on her throat, I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

I lifted myself shakily from my chair and practically ran from the room. It wasn't enough that I had developed inappropriate feelings for my friend and crewmate; it wasn't enough that I was struggling with my sexuality at an age when all of that should have been behind me.

She knew. She had to have known. Just by looking at me, just by being in the same room with me, sensing my energy. I was devastated, humiliated, terrified.

I thought that if I were to limit the amount of time we spent together, there might be some chance that she wouldn't find out. For weeks afterward, I made myself incredibly busy, with vaccines and epidemics and every Munchausen-like maneuver I could think of. I asked Ensign Bateman to come in six times to check on a bunion. Every time she asked me to spend any time with her outside of work, I was unavailable. I kept saying that the stress was getting to me and I'd have to slow down one of these days, but that was the life of a chief medical officer aboard a starship.

About a month after the poker night, I was alone in my quarters, nearly falling asleep on my sofa with a slew of reports that I hadn't the energy to go on reading. I heard the chirp of the doorbell, and got up to answer without remembering to ask who it was.

When I saw her standing there, I stiffened and looked down at my half-unbuttoned uniform jacket.

"Deanna," I said, "I'm sorry, I –"

She tilted her head to the side. "I thought you said you were taking inventory in the cargo bay tonight, and that's why you couldn't have dinner with me."

"The cargo bay," I said, gathering my wits about me just enough to berate myself for having come up with such an absurd excuse. "I finished a bit early."

She let herself in without being asked, and stood across the room with me with her arms gently folded.

"Beverly, what in the world is going on?"

I felt horribly self-conscious with my uniform jacket unbuttoned, but I was somehow unable to take any concrete action to fix my appearance. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that you've been avoiding me for weeks. One wouldn't have to be Betazoid to figure that much out. What I don't understand is why. Did I do something wrong? I thought we were friends."

My heart ached with regret. "We are friends."

"Well, it hasn't really felt that way lately. What aren't you telling me?"

I looked at the floor, the ceiling, out the window at the expressionless stars, anywhere but at her face. I could feel tears forming in my eyes, and as much as I pleaded with them not to fall, they disobeyed.

"Beverly..."

"I don't have to tell you," I said. "Don't you know already?"

"No," she replied, staring at me with her wide brown eyes. "I haven't the faintest idea. I wish you'd tell me."

I shook my head silently.

"Whatever it is, Beverly, I'll understand."

"I'm not going to tell you," I said quietly. "I would never have told you. But it's no use. Just stay here for a few minutes longer, and you'll know."

Slowly, she began to walk toward me, a concentrated expression on her face. "I know you're in pain," she said, frowning, "because you think that I – because I won't –"

The expression on her face began to change as she approached me. Her gaze, so full of empathy and kindness, felt only like a microscope exposing my shame, exposing me.

"Beverly."

"Deanna, please. Just leave me alone. We've served together for four years, and it will likely be longer, please just forget you know this about me, I'm begging you."

But she continued to search my eyes with her blinding gaze, her hands lightly touching my shoulders.

"How long?"

"What?"

"How long?"

I had no good answer. "I'm not sure," I said. "Probably since the moment I first saw you, but I just didn't know then -"

Before I could avert my eyes, she lifted my chin and pressed her lips to mine. She tangled her hands in my hair, drawing me closer to her and slipping her tongue inside my mouth.

Before I had the time to register what was happening to me, she quickly pulled away, and left without saying a word. She left me with tears stinging my eyes, staring at the doorframe, one hand over my mouth where her kiss still burned.

I could not tell if she had kissed me out of curiosity, or compassion, or something else. Truthfully, I didn't want to know. After that night, I continued to keep away from her as much as I could. I knew full well that she was involved with someone else, and I also knew that I valued my career aboard the Enterprise, and did not wish to embarrass myself any more than I already had.

I tried, with varying success, not to think of her at all. And the truth was that I really did keep myself busy, and life on the Enterprise was hardly uneventful. But every time I saw her face my heart leapt in my chest, and I could barely breathe. Every time she walked past me, every time we were in the same room.

She was like a princess from a fairy tale, so sensitive and delicate that she couldn't be touched. I believed it was my duty a to remain far away from her, and to deny my feelings for as long as I knew her.

Another few weeks went by, and then she asked me if she could come and see me again. I wanted to say no, but I said yes, either out of weakness or simply out of a desire not to appear rude.

She was wearing a beautiful black dress that I had never seen before. I wore my uniform, my ironed, buttoned Starfleet Uniform, and I invited her into my quarters for tea, and I talked for probably an hour about a seminar I had attended on Orkett's disease. Etiology, demographics, subtypes, comorbidity, prognosis, and of course, treatment.

"Beverly."

"And really, it's a terrible shame that these bone marrow transplants weren't implemented earlier, it could most likely have saved hundreds of lives, but of course we'll never know, because even with the transplant there are still risks involved, there are always risks and complications –"

"Beverly."

"Yes."

She had risen from her chair, and she sank delicately onto the sofa, tucking her legs underneath her.

"I don't really want to talk about Orkett's disease."

"Oh," I said quietly, and against my better judgment I went to sit beside her, and I looked into her wide lovely eyes. "What should we talk about, then?"

It was basically an innocent question, but she looked at me as if I had just asked something obscene.

She stared at me, long and hard, and then she said, "I'm not sure I want to talk at all."

Her eyes traveled slowly across my face, she looked at me with the most intense gaze, and finally she leaned forward, only slightly.

"Deanna," I said, before she could touch me. "This... this isn't a good idea."

She smiled under half-closed lids. "I know it isn't a good idea," she replied.

"You've been with Will for a long time."

"Yes," she said, quietly releasing the top button of my uniform.

"And we work together."

"Yes." She unzipped my jacket on the side, and it fell, revealing the small blue tank top I wore underneath. She drew in her breath, staring at me. I never in a million years thought she would stare at me that way.

Slowly, she leaned closer, and brushed my shoulder with her lips.

"Deanna."

She looked, her eyes intense and almost pleading. "Please, Beverly."

"I don't want to stop this," I said, "but I have to."

She shook her head. "I have to know," she said. "I can't go the rest of my life, not knowing how this feels."

I stopped for a moment to consider the weightiness of that argument. But in another moment her lips crashed into mine, and she was kissing me, and I became incapable of thinking at all.

I was scared of being intimate with her, not only because I didn't think she returned my feelings, but because of her tremendous intuitive abilities. I had never before been with someone who didn't have to guess anything about me, who knew what I wanted just by looking at me and being in my presence.

It was an experience not for the faint of heart. I felt my skin burning into hers, I felt the secret pages of my innermost desires falling open at her hands, and yet I didn't care. I wanted her to see every part of me. I loved her curiosity, the way her hands ripped my clothes away almost roughly, and then she would come down so lightly over me, and touch my naked body with a gentleness I had never before felt in my life.

We made love for the first time that night, over and over so many times that afterward I felt I had come to understand her almost the same way she understood me. I was instantly addicted to her touch, and I knew, even as she lay beside me, that the moment her arms would slip away I would feel the most terrible longing.

We stayed awake, as if sleeping would somehow relegate what had happened between us to the realm of imagination.

"Those things we did... you know, I've never done them before," she whispered.

I rolled my eyes at her. "Well, that's why you wanted to fuck me, isn't it?"

She looked shocked. "I didn't want to _fuck_ you, for goodness sake."

"Oh no?"

She wrinkled her nose. "No. I wanted to make love to you."

I turned away when she said that, and it took me several moments before I could meet her gaze again.

"Why is that?" I asked.

She traced the line of my cheek and jaw with her hand, and wiped my shy tears away. "Because I love you," she said simply.

It was very beautiful, that night, to hear her say it. But no matter how many times she would say it, in the weeks and months and years that followed, I never really believed her.


	5. Chapter 4

Thank you so much to those who have been reading and reviewing this story, all of your comments are very much appreciated! -Dana

Chapter Four

The woman called Cassandra Weatherfield, who had somehow found her way into my clinic, remained strangely silent. She sat upon the examination table with a deep scowl, staring at me with huge hazel eyeballs.

I began to examine her, finding quickly that in addition to some minor cuts and bruises, she was suffering from multiple small fractures, some of which had evidently gone untreated for weeks.

"I've never seen you here before. Where do you serve?" I asked, as casually as I could.

She continued to stare at me with great intensity, and then she muttered something unintelligible.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Out of town," she said, with no small amount of hostility creeping into her low-pitched voice.

I continued the examination, beginning to feel uneasy.

"I see. Well, what department do you work for?"

She rolled her great wide eyeballs. "You ask a lot of questions," she said. "Are you going to fix my arm?"

"I'll be honest with you," I replied. "I may have to refer you to another doctor if you can't give me any information about your commission. This is a Starfleet clinic."

She fell back into stony silence. It was clear to me from that moment that she was not, nor had she ever been, a Starfleet officer, and that some combination of desperation and happenstance had sent her to me.

I had half a mind to give her a referral, but this had never happened to me before, and I did not have a habit of turning patients away. There was something about the situation that made me at once terribly suspicious and also sympathetic. Why had she felt unable to seek any medical attention before now? Was she trying to hide the injuries from someone?

Aloud I said only, "Your arm is broken."

"I know," she replied dryly.

"I'm going to have to ask you to take that glove off, please."

Her eyes, which had wandered off since I began our conversation, snapped firmly back into place and peered furiously into mine.

"Could you take your glove off?" I repeated, utterly bewildered.

Almost imperceptibly, she shook her head.

"I'm not going to be able to treat you unless that glove comes off," I said gently.

Still there was no reply. Feeling that I had run out of options, I gingerly reached for her hand, and began to peel back the white racing glove that covered it.

What happened after that was an occurrence that had not befallen me in many years, and it left me paralyzed with shock. Somehow, she managed to lift herself off the examination table, hurl me by the shoulders and pin me against the wall directly behind the table, her good arm lodged underneath my chin.

"You had better listen hard because I'm only going to say this once. I know everything about you. I know that you have been fucking the fiancée of Starfleet's beloved William T. Riker six ways from Sunday. If you breathe one word of what you see here today, I will make sure that not a cadent nor an Admiral in this country won't have heard every detail of your nasty little love triangle. Do you follow me, Beverly?" The hiss of her consonants rattled in my head. "Are we perfectly clear?"

I realized, as she had me pinned to the wall and gasping for breath, that my initial scans had not accurately represented her physical strength. Not only had she withstood the pain of fractures and contusions for an extended period of time, even in her weakened state she could have quite easily killed me if she had wanted to. I lived in agonizing awareness of this fact as I nodded my assent to her, and nearly collapsed in relief as she released her hold.

She backed away from me, and returned, rather calmly, to her perch on the examination table. For a moment I rested my hands on my throat, trying to force my breathing to return to normal. I approached her once more, searching her round hazel orbs for any sign of mercy or understanding. I found none.

"I'll be taking the glove off, now."

The last thing I wanted to do was to touch the person who had just assaulted me, but she left me no choice. Receiving no objection, I took her hand in mine, and with my other hand I slowly removed the glove, sliding it up over her hand and laying it beside the table.

I saw then what she had been so loath for me to see before. Her thin, delicate hand, laced with long gray metal implants, running through her fingers and breaking through the pale skin of her palm.


	6. Chapter 5

Chapter Five

Desire. I hate the word, because I hate how much it has ruled my life. When there is nothing left, when all reason, logic and common sense have deserted us, desire remains. It haunts our memories, and destroys our prudent plans for the future. I am a woman of science, but in equal measure a victim of desire, as much as any artist or poet, as much as any person who has no knowledge of the deterministic laws that shape our understanding of the world. It makes no difference; in the end desire, and not reason, is what brings us together and tears us apart.

I spent the last three years of our journey on the Enterprise breaking up with Deanna Troi. We broke up every time we were together, and in between, and when we weren't speaking. We broke up before we made love, but never after – there was something sacred about those brief moments after, when we would look at each other in a kind of dumfounded silence. She was so indescribably beautiful. I could have gone on looking at her for a hundred years.

There was a party for the promotion of some old-timer to Fleet Admiral, his name was O'Malley, or O'Shaughnessy, and I knew that I would see her there, walking lightly on Will Riker's arm and smiling in that serene way that irritated me beyond measure. It was nearing the end of our time on the Enterprise, and I had come to the conclusion that he meant to marry her and that she meant one day to accept. And so I had broken off with her for the last time, but truly the last time, and I was holding myself steadfastly to that wise decision.

I wore a white dress that night, and I remember thinking to myself that a certain number of people were looking at me with some interest. I might have, in any other circumstance, been flattered, but the truth was that I didn't care at all. Every time I caught sight of her my heart stopped, I felt dizzy and nauseous and about to faint. She was so radiant, and flawless, and composed, and I hated her almost as much as I loved her.

I had calculated that if I stayed another fifteen minutes I could make a polite exit. I stood near the wall fidgeting and feigning mild enjoyment. But suddenly her hand was on my wrist, and without my consent, she pulled me in the direction of the vacant cloakroom. When I looked up at her in shock, there was a devilish grin on her face.

"Deanna, what the hell are you doing? Anyone might walk in here at any moment, and we personally know about seventy percent of the people at this party, do you realize that?"

She threw her arms lightly around my neck. "Get your mind out of the gutter," she whispered, her dark eyes sparkling. "I just want to dance. No one's watching. Will you dance with me Beverly? Please?"

I rolled my eyes in exasperation. But in fact, the slow music from the party echoed beautifully in the deserted space, and we were, at least for the moment, entirely alone, and as she moved her body closer to mine, I didn't stop her. I drew my arms around her, reluctantly, and we began to dance, except we were barely dancing, barely even moving. She ran her fingers lightly up and down my arms, and her lips brushed against my neck, and in that transcendent moment I raised my eyes and saw the figure of Will Riker standing in the doorway.

I stiffened, pushing her gently away from me.

"There you are," he said, and she turned her head to look at him.

I laughed. "I was just giving her a last-minute lesson on the waltz."

"I see that!" he replied in his jovial manner. "Any progress?"

I guided her to him, and took my hand quickly off of her back. "I guess you'll have to see for yourself, won't you? Have a good time, you two."

She looked back at me as he led her out of the cloakroom, but I didn't meet her eyes. I couldn't. In a few minutes, I returned to the hall where the party was taking place I said a few faint goodbyes to the people who noticed, and then I fled from the room, from the building, from everyone and everything. It took me nearly an hour to walk home, in that kind of grief and anguish I had not experienced since my adolescence.

-PAGE BREAK-

When I reached my apartment, I took a good, long look in the mirror. It amazed me to realize that the wretched, heartbroken woman that I was on the inside somehow did not shine through; she was quite cleverly concealed behind expensive fabric, careful makeup, and a well-rehearsed expression of placidity. But she didn't fool me for a second. I knew everything about her, and I knew that the moment I let my guard slip, she would take me over completely.

I took off my dress and slipped a light button-down shirt over my body. I washed all of the makeup off my face, trying to wash away every memory of the evening.

And then at three o'clock in the morning, that eternal image of Deanna standing at my door, soaking wet from the rainstorm that had begun to rage.

"Go home," I said, as coldly and as emotionlessly as I could. "Don't you think we've gotten into enough trouble tonight as it is? Sometimes I think you just want him to find out."

She shook her head, and I could tell she had been crying. "You looked so beautiful," she whispered. "I think that everyone in the room wanted to kiss you tonight, and I just felt that if I didn't, I would go crazy."

I didn't have time to protest the compliment. For the second time that night, I allowed her to touch me when I shouldn't have.

"It's okay," she said, noticing the expression on my face. "We're just kissing."

She was lying, and I knew she was lying but I let her go on anyway. It was never just a kiss. And every time she kissed me, I was paralyzed in a world with no true north, no moral compass.

"I told you. I told you, we're just kissing."

"Is that so?"

"Yes," she breathed into my ear.

Without any hesitation I reached under her dress, pulling down her undergarments in one swift, almost violent movement.

"And now? Are we still just kissing now? Is that what you want?"

"Oh God," she moaned, as my hand made contact with her soaking wet center. "Please!"

"Please what?" I was furious, and she knew it, and neither of us cared.

"_Please fuck me._"

"Is that what you want?"

"Yes! God, yes! _Please,_ Beverly!"

She came quickly, and hard, biting down on my bare shoulder. Drawing my blood, in that way she had, literally and figuratively, of breaking me down, and it was not as much painful as it was exquisite, and terrifying. She exposed me, and broke my skin, down to my soul.

-PAGE BREAK-

And so it began again, and probably would have continued forever if he had not at long last proposed marriage to her, and if she had not accepted. I am not sure what it was that changed for me, or why, but somehow there seemed to be an infinite difference between fucking someone's girlfriend, and fucking that same person's fiancée. When I let her go that final time, when I found out about the engagement, I knew she wouldn't come back – and not because of her, but because of me. I had once thought her invincibly honest, but in the end I came to believe that I was in fact the stronger of the two of us. It was as if, having once broken from her natural inclinations, she had no anchor to bring her back to them. Because I loved her, I was finally determined to become that anchor for her, no matter what the cost.


	7. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Cassandra Weatherfield and I seemed to have reached some type of a truce, at least for the duration of her visit. I silently tended to her wounds, and she silently watched me, her great mournful eyes tracing my every move. We went on in this way, just until my curiosity and my annoyance got the best of me.

"All right, well, if you aren't from Starfleet, just where are you from, exactly?" I asked her, trying my best to sound as if I didn't care one whit about the answer.

"Kansas," she replied, her low voice dripping with sarcasm.

I decided in my wisdom to ignore this response, and simply to go on treating her. She had a bad sprain on her left leg, and I had no idea how she had been succeeding in walking upright all this time.

"Can you rotate the ankle?" She winced. "Okay, that's enough."

After a pause, she said quietly, "Apocrypha."

"What?"

She sighed. "Where I'm from."

I stood up, having concluded my examination. "Apocrypha," I repeated. "Where in the hell is that?"

Her full lips parted in a crooked smile that I couldn't quite characterize.

"It isn't really one place," she said. "It's where the lost souls go. People who have gone just a bit crazy, who have lived through wars and can't forget them. People like me. And people like you."

It was my turn to stare.

"Don't look so surprised, Beverly. There are many fine Starfleet officers just like yourself who, despite their best intentions end up at Apocrypha. Some of them quite enjoy it I should say."

I raised an eyebrow. "Is this a public service announcement?"

I had leaned slightly forward to sterilize a cut on her shoulder, and without warning she gripped my wrist in her metallic grasp. She pulled me close to her, and I stiffened completely, anticipating another attack. "The trick is," she whispered into my ear, "you will never get to Apocrypha unless you're running away. It must be all-consuming, an itch you can't scratch, a feeling that you will absolutely crawl out of your skin if you can't escape from where you are. I don't suppose you're acquainted with that feeling."

My eyes met hers, far too close for comfort. I could barely breathe. "I don't suppose I am."

Her scarred hand stayed my arm even as I tried to move away. "Beverly," she said, and

every time she said my name I had a terrible sense of dread. "There's no need to be

ashamed. Who among us hasn't lost someone we've loved, due to some injustice?"

Finally she let me go, and I resumed my work. I felt shaken and nervous, and tried with all my strength not to demonstrate this.

"I'd really like to know where you've been getting your information," I said. "Is it a tactic you've borrowed from Starfleet?"

She shook her head, ignoring the agitation in my voice, and continuing to probe me with her eyes as I performed my final tricorder sweep of her body. "No tactic," she said. "Just common sense. When you belong to Apocrypha, the truth about people just tends to shine through. Isn't it always the things we'd most like to hide that we are actually incapable of hiding? My hands, for instance. You must have noticed them as soon as you looked at me, the way they were covered. And within minutes you discovered the very fact I'm most ashamed of; that I'm Borg, in some form or other. I'm sure you'd love to hide your broken heart too, and let the world go on seeing you as the steadfast, competent doctor, who would never dream of engaging in the slightest impropriety. That's your wish, isn't it?"

Hoping to surprise her for once, I snapped my tricorder back into place and turned my

back to her. "Not really," I said flatly, putting my medical equipment away. "If it were

just for my own sake I wouldn't care at all. I've kept the secret for Deanna."

I turned back round to face the woman with a serene smile. "There you go, good as new.

Go easy on your left leg for a few days, use your right arm for any heavy lifting, and don't forget to put your gloves back on when you leave. We wouldn't want the other patients staring."


	8. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

From that day forward, I thought of almost nothing but the bizarre woman who had presented herself in my waiting room, and the conversation we had shared. It was, if I may be honest, a miraculous distraction from thinking about Deanna. I did hours of research, trying to find the meaning of the Apocrypha, but found nothing other than references to ancient mythological texts. Surely that couldn't have been what she was talking about.

I suppose I ought to have been outraged, and most likely afraid, that she had somehow discovered my secret and was using it as a means of blackmail, but somehow any emotions I might have been experiencing were eclipsed by utter fascination.

It was clear to me that this woman was a medical marvel. I am no stranger to the Borg, and she was not Borg by any traditional definition. How she had come to be, and why, were the questions keeping me up at night, poring over my inconclusive scans and secretly hoping she would return to the clinic.

I did not think she would betray my secret, because I did not doubt her sincere need for medical attention. The other thing that puzzled me about her was the sheer number of injuries she had sustained. She must have been in some type of accident. Would she have initiated this contact with me for a one-time occurrence? Or did she somehow suspect that she would be hurt again, and need my help again?

In the days that followed, she did not return. I had pieced together a file in her name, so that if ever she made another appearance, it would seem as if she were a regular patient. Strangely, the receptionist at the clinic had no recollection of having seen her in the waiting room on the day she came.

Apocrypha, from the Greek. Meaning, that which has been hidden away.

I fell back into my routine. I went to bed late, and got up early. Every morning, I contemplated the hypocrisy of telling my patients that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, when I never ate it. Some days, I cleaned my apartment obsessively, and at other moments I let it go entirely. Each night, I fell asleep with a bunch of miscellaneous work-related computer pads strewn across my bed. She hated that habit so much, she used to threaten to sleep on the sofa if I kept it up.

Summer had turned to fall. When the October wind brushed through my fingers, I could almost feel her hand lightly slipping into mine. Sometimes I would even turn to look, to heighten the illusion, to transfix it in my mind. It never went away. They say that losing someone you love is like losing a limb, an internal organ without which you can't breathe and can't function. If it happens quickly, you are perhaps lucky, as the lucky soul who feels that blinding flash of pain, and then nothing afterward. But for me it happened slowly, a little more each day, each hour. I could feel myself gently becoming a ghost, my face in the mirror transparent, losing its color, as if someone had been, little by little, draining my blood.

On a cold Monday night, crashing into Tuesday, unable to sleep as usual, I flipped angrily through the Starfleet broadcast channels, finding them mind-numbingly dull. An entire hour on protozoa known to infect bio-neural gel packs. An all-night information session on a new classification system for battle ships. News I had heard a hundred times. Weather. More weather. Political upheaval on the Klingon home world.

"Attention Starfleet Officers! Looking for a thrill?"

The sharp voice was marred by static, and I tried in vain to clear it up. A tall young man appeared intermittently on my screen, staring at the camera with a terribly intense expression.

"Been on the ground for too long? Looking for the ride of your life? Apocrypha racing club is here for you. Come fly with us, and I can guarantee, you'll never look back."


	9. Chapter 8

Chapter Eight

It made perfect sense. Her gloves, the uniform she had been wearing, the injuries she had sustained. She had clearly been in a racing accident, and most likely not her first.

Apocrypha wasn't a place. It was a group of people – frustrated, angry people, looking for an outlet to escape from mainstream society. When I brought up the word at the dinner table at an academic conference, I received wide-eyed stares of incomprehension, and a couple of indignant coughs. When I brought up the same word at the dive bar across the street from my apartment, I was told stories about the Starfleet parts that had been stolen to upgrade Apocrphya's illegal racing vessels. From these telling experiments, I pieced together my own notions about the true nature of Apocrypha.

I mentioned in public only the name; I said nothing to anyone of my meeting with Cassandra. I didn't dare. I had the distinct impression that if I so much as breathed the word Borg, I would receive a summons to appear in court. Intellectually I recognized that I owed this woman nothing – she, after all, had threatened my life and my reputation without scruple. But something within me told me to protect her, to keep the secret of her existence at least until I saw her again. I felt I was perhaps on the brink of a major discovery, which would never come to pass if I were to lose her trust. At the same time, the wiser part of me believed that if I never saw her again, it would be too soon.

I met Cassandra again on a rainy Saturday morning. I had decided to go in to the clinic alone, to take inventory of the medical supplies. It was something of a tradition. I have always considered taking inventory to be a fundamentally solitary activity, and have always chosen a day in the year when I knew that no one else would be present and that I'd have no distractions. There is something marvelously calming about counting hyposprays and tricorders, and measuring small amounts of sterilizing agents. There is a certain beauty in repetitive work that requires only a minimum of concentration.

At 07h00, my examination room was pitch dark, and deadly quiet. I placed my coffee mug on the counter and stood for a moment in the blissful silence.

"Computer, li –"

"Miss me?"

I jumped a mile. There she was. A dark, lanky silhouette reclining on the examination table.

"What are you doing here?"

"You didn't answer my question."

My pulse raced. I had the impulse to reach for a weapon, but of course I had none with me.

"Look, the medical clinic is closed today. Why don't you come back during the week and make an appointment?"

This, not surprisingly, had no effect on her whatever.

"Computer. Lights."

"You've been asking about me, Beverly."

I had my back to her, and I began scrubbing my hands.

"I've no idea what you're talking about."

"You don't need to play games. I know you've been trying to find out everything you can about me. You're fascinated."

I snapped on my latex gloves.

"You can count those bottles of insect repellant as much as you want, but I know you've just been waiting for me to come back."

I didn't stop what I was doing, somehow I felt determined to go about my morning as if she weren't present.

"You had no right to threaten me the way you did," I said. "I would have helped you anyway."

"Out of the kindness of your heart, no doubt. And what about your precious girl from Betazed? Still keeping on the path to adultery and ruin?"

Finally I turned to face her.

"What about Deanna? We don't speak anymore."

"You don't say. What in the world happened?"

I chose to ignore the sarcasm. "That's all there is to it."

She tilted her head to the side. "That's too bad."

I shrugged my shoulders. "Some stories just don't have a happy ending, I guess."

I walked behind the examination table to reach the cabinet on the other side.

"I'm pretty sure that I could provide you with a happy ending."

Her voice, so close to me, sent some type of shiver down my spine. She was frightening, and unsavory, and crass, and everything Deanna wasn't.

My eyes met hers, with great hesitation.

"I know you're just dying to see it."

I felt all of the blood draining from my face. All I could do was stare.

Suddenly she broke out in a peal of harsh laughter. "I'm talking about Apocrypha! You're horrifically uptight, aren't you. What did you think I was talking about?"

I let out my breath and moved away from the examination table as quickly as I could.

"Well? Am I right?"

I laid my computer pad rather too forcefully on a nearby tray. "What makes you think that I want to see Apocrypha?"

"I don't mean to be rude, but you fit the profile."

"The profile?"

She hopped off the examination table nimbly, her leg, evidently, having healed.

"You're a fine Starfleet officer. You're ethical, courageous, noble, by the book, and not just a little bit boring. Sometimes you even bore yourself when you think of how hellishly square your life has been. Whether you want to admit it or not, the biggest milestones of your career are probably behind you. And you look around, at your two-bedroom apartment in the most Starfleet district in your Starfleet town, at your well-furnished medical bay with all of these nonsensical tools and gadgets just to mend the scrapes of a few pompous Admirals, and you think, where has it all gotten me? What has been the result of all of my tireless, selfless labor all these years? Nothing but a broken heart, a lonely walk home in the October rain, and the memory of a beautiful woman who left you for a man, because she was too much a of a coward to admit she loved you. And like the dedicated, honorable officer that you are, you stand aside, and you say nothing, and you watch the world go on without you."

I searched her eyes, large and hazel and eternally unfeeling. "I appreciate the analysis," I said dryly, "but it's not true. I love practicing medicine. And I don't feel that the world has gone on without me. I'm fortunate to be doing what I love, every day."

She sauntered closer to me, not once breaking eye contact. "Really," she said quietly. "Then why are you standing here, with me, dreaming about leaving it all behind?"


	10. Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

We touched down, of all places, on Alpha Walker, an old Starfleet space station which had reportedly fallen into disrepair years ago and had not been resurrected since. Evidently, it had been taken over by someone else. I had probably been to Alpha Walker once or twice at the beginning of my career, but everything about it had changed immensely. Its former stark, industrial design had been replaced by an artificial outdoor atmosphere which, despite its obvious unnaturalness, was rather lovely. There were fields of bright artificial grass, and trails of forest populated by white-barked trees and pleasantly overgrown brush. The flat fields extended for miles, and in the distance I could see a series of landing ramps and a yard of racing vessels of various dimensions. Harkening back to the old era of racing, there were flags waving furiously, attached to the clenched hands of red-faced referees.

Cassandra had given me a uniform to wear, almost identical to her own. At first I had objected strongly, but she had made it a condition of our visit.

The grounds were swarmed, and I saw several women marching past who looked quite a bit like Cassandra herself, at least from a distance - tall and thin, wearing the same beige racing uniforms, light hair pulled into knots. Standing at the top of a small hill was an older, very thin woman, probably of about sixty. She had an authoritative air about her which seemed to indicate a position of power, but I had nothing concrete on which to base that assumption. She stood quite still and surveyed the territory with a sharp and dissatisfied gaze. I followed the line of her eyes, and discovered three or four men in the distance, wearing Starfleet uniforms. They seemed to be discussing intently something of great import, and then they disappeared down an entrance leading underground.

My travel companion, ever observant, had noticed me looking at the older woman.

"That's Margaret," she said. "If I were you, I wouldn't necessarily tell her who you work for. Hey! Margaret."

The woman called Margaret spun around neatly, and stepped down from her vantage point to join us. To Cassandra, she said only, "Where have you been?"

"Relax," replied my new friend. "Remember that torn meniscus? All taken care of."

"Is that so," said the other, eyeing Cassandra up and down suspiciously. "And who's this?"

"This," said Cassandra with a tone of pride that I couldn't understand at all, "is Beverly. She's curious about Apocrypha."

Margaret turned her dark, wide-set, penetrating eyes on me, and I had to fight the urge to look away. "Are you?"

"Am I what?" I replied blankly.

"Are you curious."

I didn't have an idea how to answer that question. "Well," I said falteringly, "I suppose I must be."

She nodded absently, as if she hadn't heard my response. She released me from her steady gaze and for a moment looked off in the distance.

"There aren't any good reasons to be curious about this place," she said quietly. "Have a good morning."

I watched her walk away, long strides, back straight.

"Come with me," said Cassandra. "I'm going to show you the _Iberia._"

"Who is she?" I asked, following Cassandra but still looking behind me.

"Margaret? She's the managing director of Apocrypha. Took over when old man Willis kicked the bucket."

She rolled her eyes, noticing that I was still looking backward. "Look, don't worry about her, she's just a bit of a taskmaster."

"Why did you tell me not to mention I'm a Starfleet officer?"

"In case you haven't noticed, Apocrypha is not exactly the most conservative group of people in the world."

"Which is why I was surprised to see a number of Starfleet officers descending into that vault over there."

She frowned slightly. "It's not a perfect system. Sometimes you have to make concessions. Give a little, get a little."

I had to content myself with that, as no further explanation was offered.

We walked through the forest and around a long lake of pale blue water. She was silent, and I really did not know how to break her particular silence. I contented myself by looking through the branches of the white-barked trees at the glaring artificial sunlight overhead. It sparkled brightly on the water, giving the impression of a glorious midday, perhaps in a state park, or somewhere in the suburbs.

And Cassandra was looking at me in a way that reminded me, somehow, of the way Deanna used to look at me. There was something secretive in her look, as if she were waiting for a reaction to a question she hadn't asked. I was completely aware of her, and I didn't trust her for a moment, but her gaze made me feel a way I hadn't felt in a long while, not since Deanna left.

I suppose it made me feel alive.

"Well, here she is. What do you think of her?"

We had come to a small clearing, which was presently home to a lone vessel.

"I won't leave her in the shipyard because I can't stand the thought of anyone borrowing her," she confessed. "This is where I keep her on the days I'm not racing. Don't you think she's beautiful, Beverly?"

I wasn't listening. I could do nothing but stare at this ship, which, for all intents and purposes could have been the property of Starfleet. Everything about it, from the design and structure to the tint of its windows gave its origins away.

Aloud I said only, "Can I see inside?"

A bit ceremoniously, she opened the sliding doors, and I stepped inside. I might have been aboard the Delta Flyer. Bio-neural gel packs, warp drive, navigation and piloting consoles that had every Starfleet hallmark but the insignia itself.

I stared at Cassandra.

"What?" she asked innocently.

"You use this ship for….?"

"Racing," she replied. "And my own travels, occasionally."

I was silent.

"You seem surprised, Beverly."

I shook my head. "Maybe I shouldn't be surprised. Maybe nothing about this should surprise me."

She tilted her head to the side. "Didn't anyone ever teach you that every shiny coin has its rusted side? You probably think there's something criminal going on here, but you have to remember that crime, like everything else, is relative."

"To tell you the truth, I don't know what to think."

Slowly, she came closer to me. She stood behind me, and put her hand gently, but insistently, on my shoulder.

"Maybe you're doing too much thinking. Maybe what you really want is to see me turn on that engine, to hear it warm up."

Her lips, intentionally or otherwise, just barely brushed against my jaw line, just under my ear.

"Maybe what you really want is for us to get the hell out of here together."


	11. Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

I should have predicted this; her knotted hands on the conn, her deep, spherical eyes wet with exhilaration. This woman did not know how to pilot a ship, or else she knew too much for her own good. She was like a drunk driver playing games with the road. She had, as far as I could tell, only one desire in her heart, and this was to travel at excessively high speeds. I hadn't really ever seen her smile before, but when she reached that dangerous speed just below warp, and settled there, she wore an expression of pure contentment.

I realized, not far into our journey, that there would be no point in begging her to stop. I was her prisoner; maybe I had been from the beginning. A heavy piece of debris ripped past our hull with a fraction of an inch to spare, and in that instant I realized something about her that I probably should have understood before, that this was not a woman who cared about whether she lived or died.

I think maybe I did scream for her to stop, but it was too late anyway, we were traveling far to fast for any maneuver to make a difference. But when it was over, I felt a dull pain in my throat that made me think I had probably been screaming.

I knelt on the sandy surface of the unknown place where our ship had landed. My head throbbed, and I had very little sense of time, or space, or anything else. In my mind's traumatic recall, I watched the great rock slip over the view screen and out of sight, but in my memory it had crashed right through, and struck us down. As much as I could feel my knees on the soft ground, I could still feel my body limp and lifeless on _Iberia's_ floor. I stared past the rubble at the open sky, wondering, had she meant to kill me, or had I meant, myself, to die. I felt my life slipping away, moment by moment, the way I had always imagined death to occur, in pieces. I couldn't move, and couldn't speak, but I remembered praying for Deanna, and that she didn't come.

Gradually, the cascading rays of an unknown sun forced their way into my eyes. Cassandra was just a few feet away, making repairs to the _Iberia. _I could hear her hacking at that ship as if it were an inexpensive piece of metal that would be no trouble to replace. If this was how she treated her most beloved possession, I did not care to know how she treated her friends and acquaintances.

This sun above us could have easily been Earth's sun, except I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that it wasn't. And this woman could have been human, but she wasn't, and I could have been all right. I could have escaped my suffering, forgotten about it, transcended it even. But I hadn't, and perhaps I never would.

When she was finished she came to sit beside me. I thought she could tell I was angry with her because she didn't look at me, and didn't say a word. She just stared straight ahead with her violent hazel eyes. It was a strange type of silence, bathed in the echoes of her drill bit driving its way into _Iberia's _metal frame. But I knew without having to be told that she had managed to make that ship functional again. Otherwise, she never would have stopped her labor, not for a second. Her care and concern showed themselves in the form of raw perseverance, if not tenderness.

"Who are you?" I said finally. "Are you human? Are you Borg, are you both?"

She narrowed her eyes in the harsh light. I could see that she had deep scratches on her face, either from our accident aboard the ship, or from her efforts to repair it.

"Me? I don't exist at all. You won't find a record of my birth anywhere, and I'll be surprised as hell if there is ever a record of my death. I'm a joke, Beverly. I'm the product of one man's twisted desire to create the perfect soldier."

She turned her bright gaze on me for a second. "The joke is on me, I suppose, because in almost every way I am the perfect soldier. I will kill, or I'll be killed, it's all the same to me. Bloodshed, blood on my hands, my blood on someone else's. What does it really matter? We've all got to end somehow. And you don't truly know something until you've destroyed it. I can't count the number of times I've put that ship back together from a pile of dust. But no one can put me back together, because I'm just spare parts. I might have been born in a junkyard, but I'll tell you, I don't want to die there. I want to die on my ship, surrounded by stars and empty space. I want to die while I'm still free. Don't you want that too?"

I remained silent, because I had no idea how to answer her question, and because I couldn't stop thinking of all the things I wanted to say to her. But they deserted my mind just as quickly.

Presently she withdrew a vial of blue liquid from one of the pockets in her uniform. She drank from it quickly, then replaced the lid.

"What in the hell that?"

"Psychic Sisters," she replied. "It's amazing."

"Is it some type of drug? What is it? I'm a doctor, you should tell me before you hurt yourself."

She laughed. "For all you know, this is what keeps me alive. You're such a strange girl, Beverly. You're afraid of everything, but you've just got to try it anyway."

For an unknown reason, perhaps out of sheer fatigue, I felt my anger dissipating. "I don't recall saying anything about wanting to try it."

"Well that's just it. You don't have to say it. I already know. Just like I know everything else about you."

With that, she leaned towards me and touched her lips to mine. I wouldn't have called it a kiss as such, but when I bit my lip I felt the few drops of burning liquid dissolve on my tongue.

It was exquisite. And in a moment I knew exactly what was in her mind, the direction of her thoughts, the thousand emotions that flooded her body. I felt her rage, her despair, and her longing for freedom. I felt these things as if they were all inside of me, a silent storm rising, begging to be released.

"How does it feel?"

I stared at her in utter fascination. I felt my mind becoming cloudy, filled only with the weight of her eyes on me. I saw through her torturous memories, I saw thousands of bodies being exhumed from the ground, and Borg implants being grafted into screaming human subjects, who were being held down by steel restraints. I saw these things as if they had happened to me, terror coursing through my veins and overwhelming all my senses.

Compulsively, I moved closer to her, or else she leaned toward me, and I was no longer afraid of her. I needed her the way she needed the drug. I needed to feel her beating heart, her mouth, the cold comfort of her twisted hands at the back of my neck, supporting me as I fell deeper into unconsciousness.


	12. Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

In my dream, she was standing near the ocean, the hem of her long purple dress fluttering in the wind, her raven hair falling down her bare back.

"Deanna…"

When finally she spun around to look at me, her eyes were dark and full of resentment.

"Did you hear me?"

"Why did you let me go, Beverly?"

I shook my head in bewilderment. "I didn't have a choice."

She shook her head slowly, her eyes searching my very soul. "It's very convenient to say that we didn't have a choice, when really we just want to excuse ourselves for taking the easy way out. Look at you. Look at what you've become."

At first, I didn't understand what she meant, when she lowered her gaze and gestured to me impatiently. Quizzically I looked down, and I saw that I was dressed in an Apocrypha racing uniform, with black racing gloves on my hands. The uniform was stained with deep red blood, sticky and newly shed.

"You're one of them now, Beverly. You're a violent predator, fixated on defending your futile cause, and you'll stop at nothing. I thought I knew you, but I was obviously wrong."

I felt my heart pounding in my chest. "It's not true," I protested. "I'm not one of them, I don't even know how this happened."

"I suppose you're going to say you didn't have a choice. That losing me made you turn to this, and I'm responsible for all of your failings."

"No! No, it's not that at all! I honestly don't know how I got here. You have to believe me. You have to!"

She looked at me pityingly. "There's nothing I can do for you now. You can call for me when you're hurt, when you're dying, but I won't be there. You've got your new family to protect you."

With that she disappeared into the ocean and, true to her word, my cries for mercy did not bring her back. I felt a sudden searing pain in my stomach, and bent down to the ground, realizing, too late, that the blood on my uniform was my own.

I awoke in a panic, tears streaming down my face. I was in my own bed, but I had no idea how I had returned home, and my memories of the past twenty-four hours were limited to a few fleeting images.

I brought my hand up to my lower lip, which still stung from Cassandra's harsh kiss.

I had let her kiss me.

What else had I let her do to me?

My whole body was weak, and my muscles were heavy and sore. I tried to remember, but at the same time, I could not face remembering. Whatever I had done, whatever I had allowed to be done to me, I wanted to remain in blurred and disorderly fragments. That piece of debris, scraping past our hull. Cassandra's mighty arm breaking open the ship's door to in the brilliant sunlight. Her cold metallic hand, caressing my face. The taste of poison on my lips.

And Cassandra's memories that were now inside of me, barely rising to the surface, haunting me all the same. She had left me with so many questions, and so many fears that I couldn't put into words.

I forced my aching body out of bed, and I took a long shower, a real shower with real water that rained over me and filled me, albeit briefly, with relief.

When I looked out my window that night, everything was different. I had the sense of belonging somewhere else, to a hidden margin of society that most people either feared or couldn't understand. I searched once again for the advertisement about Apocrypha, and once again stared into the face of the eager-looking youth who promised fast-paced adventures and cloudless skies. I gazed at him through exhausted eyes, older and wiser from the knowledge of what that place was really like.

I wanted to lie to myself, to tell myself that there was no way I would ever go back there. It was a shop of horrors. There was a destructive force in the people who lived and worked there, and it was let free on the fields and runways of Alpha Walker, seducing everything in its path. Then, the horrid realization dawned on me; that I hadn't left of my own free will. I had wanted to stay. Someone had brought me back, someone who had left me here alone, waiting for the next breath of life, any sign at all that my experiences had some meaning.

Instead, the wind howled outside my door, warning me that danger, just like Apocrypha, was everywhere, inescapable and ephemeral at the same time.


	13. Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve

Every drug has its beautiful high. That moment when you know that the world is brighter, clearer, more conquerable. The drug is a catalyst, a jumping-off point for you to realize your true nature. Every drug is a diving board. 

But then, as the waves crash over your head, you realize that you can't swim and you reach for a life preserver only to find that none exists. You are drowning. The drug has become the water that fills your lungs and obstructs your airways. And as you succumb to its overwhelming force, you cannot believe that the very thing killing you is the only thing that made you want to stay alive.

There are many drugs of this nature, and Psychic Sisters is no exception. In the weeks following my encounter with Cassandra, I felt physically ill. I was dizzy and off-balance all the time; I couldn't move a muscle without feeling everything start to spin on an absurd axis, the walls begin to close in, nausea overtaking me. I couldn't eat. I couldn't sleep. I treated myself with all manner of man-made remedies, but I knew that there were only two ways to survival – to wait it out, or to get my hands on the drug. There was a part of me that was astounded to even be considering this second option. _Beverly, you're a fucking doctor_ was my silent scream to myself, staring in the mirror at my rail-thin body that was wasting away, my sunken eyes and hungry-looking face. _You're a fucking doctor._

But I dreamed of it. I dreamed of the little vial with that precious blue liquid, and the alternate reality that followed from letting it just dance, momentarily, on my lips. If I could only have it, then Deanna would be gone. She would be buried, dead, lost, out of consciousness. I could be one with the consciousness of another; of one whose memories were so brutal that the entirety of my life would fade away in them.

Some days, I couldn't get out of bed, let alone to work. On the days that I made it into the clinic, I was distracted, irritable, confused, and bordering on incompetent. I told my colleagues that I had been exposed to a strain of Bajoran flu and that I was being treated outside of San Francisco. I had the feeling that everyone was looking at me with suspicion. When they asked me how I was feeling I could barely mumble the lies I had planned to tell. I felt there was no amount of makeup in the world that could cover the dark circles and deep lines that had overrun my face.

I couldn't understand why Cassandra hadn't come to see me, why she didn't send word. I had fantasies of traveling to Alpha Walker, confronting her, demanding that she give me the drug or tell me how to get rid of the craving. But I held back. I tossed and turned my way through every torturous night until finally one morning, I opened my eyes and didn't immediately feel the need to crawl to the washroom.

On that morning I washed my face, scrubbed it clean of the pounds of makeup I had worn the day before. I decided I had got enough natural color back to venture into the outside world unmasked. I buttoned up my coat and walked briskly in the November chill, past the Starfleet Academy campus, and up the small hill to the clinic.

When I least expected her, there she was. Sitting in my waiting room, staring solidly at the floor, arms folded, racing uniform clinging to her thin frame. I said nothing, but nodded my head in her direction and listened to her footsteps following me into the examination room.

"I was wondering when you'd come back," I said, trying to hide my emotion at seeing her. "I was beginning to think you'd forgotten I existed."

She said nothing. She slid onto the examination table without even a look in my direction.

"That wasn't just a drop of wine you gave me. I almost tried to go to Alpha Walker to find you. It hasn't been easy, Cassandra."

I turned to look at her, and found her head tilted forward, her large eyes leering at me passively. Still she said nothing. I let out a sigh of pure frustration.

"Well, let's have it. Why are you here?"

I had approached her closely, and she seemed to be staring at me with ever-greater suspicion.

"My left leg," she said, oddly. "I think it's sprained."

"Again? Didn't I tell you to go easy on it?"

There was no answer.

"Cassandra..."

I searched for her eyes but she had turned away from me and was gazing intently at the floor.

I touched her shoulder gently. "Why won't you talk to me?"

She shot me an uncomprehending glance, as if I was speaking a foreign language. I removed my hand, seeing that it was an unwanted touch, and resigned myself to beginning my examination.

"Well, I guess I'll have to forgive your mood. Since you've suffered repeated fractures to the tibia I would highly recommend that you look into physiotherapy. I don't know what type of medical services are available to you on Alpha Walker but if you'd like, I'd be happy to provide you with a referral. Of course, I'd prefer not to go through Starfleet channels, given the nature of your work, as we've talked about, so if you don't mind I'll most likely..."

It was my turn to fall silent. I passed my medical tricorder over and over the bone that she had broken before. I threw the tricorder aside and grabbed another one from the tray table. I passed it again, five, six, seven times.

Straightening myself up, I stared into her unflinching eyes.

"You never broke your leg."

She tilted her head to one side. "What?"

I leaned close to her. "Cassandra Weatherfield sustained multiple fractures to her left tibia."

"And?"

"Your leg has never been broken. "

I tried to stop my voice from breaking, but to no avail.

"What is going on? Who the hell are you?"

The woman lunged at me, grabbing my wrists so hard that the tricorder fell to the ground.

"Shut up," she hissed, her face inches from mine. "Just shut up. Listen to me, Cassandra Weatherfield is dead. She drove her ship head first into a neutron star last Monday morning."

"What – how –"

"Now I suggest you shut up and get back to fixing my leg, or there will be a world of trouble waiting for you."

I was struggling to escape from her, but just like Cassandra, this woman had a vice grip that was not to be overcome.

"I don't understand. Cassandra - all of those women that I saw on Alpha Walker – those blond women who looked alike – "

She smiled clownishly. "Surprise," she whispered.

Tears sprang into my eyes.

"Hey," she said, "don't worry about Cassandra's little jaunt that got her killed. We all do things like that, it's in our nature. We must have been created that way."

I let out my breath, slowly. "Please. Please let go of me."

To my astonishment, she obeyed. I stepped backward dizzily.

"How did this happen?"

"I don't know."

"How did you –"

"Do you really think I'm going to answer your questions? I thought we had an arrangement."

"Really? What arrangement is that?"

"You sew me up, and I don't tell the world your precious little secret. Isn't that how this works?"

I shook my head. "One person knew my precious little secret, as you put it. One person. Her name was Cassandra, and you just told me that she's dead."

"My name is Cassandra too. All of our names are Cassandra. And what one of us knows, all of us know. That's why you never really have to grieve her death. Her memories and her consciousness live on in all of us."

She paused, extending her wounded left leg on the examination table. "And you're lucky enough to be our doctor."

Seeing that I had no way out, I did as she asked. I approached her once more with my most convincing expression of professional detachment, and did not look her in the eye again. I finished examining her leg, set it, and recommended robotically that she refrain from putting pressure on it for several weeks.

"You can't continue doing this," I said meekly, when I had finished.

"Doing what?"

"Blackmailing me into being your physician. I have a clinic to run, and I can't risk this getting out of hand."

She was completely unmoved. "You should have thought of that before you started fucking someone else's girlfriend."

"Fuck you. You don't know anything about me."

She laughed. "And here I was about to give you a thank-you present."

"What?"

Artfully she pulled out a tiny blue vial from her inside pocket. "I know what you want, Beverly," she whispered. "I know what you've been craving, what's been keeping you awake, night after night. Here. Take it."

She said those last words almost kindly.

With a cry of disgust, I took the vial away from her and threw it vigorously to the ground, where it shattered.

When she had gone, I bent over the sink and washed my hands over and over, rubbing sore all the places on my skin that the drug had touched.

"Don't worry Beverly. I'll find another way to say thank you," she had said condescendingly, before she walked away.


	14. Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen

Had they even held a funeral for her?

It seemed so barbaric, so senseless. The fact that there were evidently other women who looked like her, and perhaps thought like her, did not make her any less of a person in her own right. And despite the knowledge I had of her memories and experiences, I still couldn't understand why she had died. She had told me that she didn't care much about living or dying; that it was somehow all the same to her, and so she wasn't afraid. I had almost thought she wanted to kill both of us on the _Iberia,_ but she hadn't – she had only wanted to show me her life, the pain of it, and the intensity of her suffering. And she had made me feel it.

Had she just decided one day that she had had enough? Was it a pure destructive impulse that had driven her ship into that neutron star? Or had she always known, and waited to choose the right moment? Had she, in those last moments of life, finally felt afraid?

Had she thought of me ever again, the way I thought of her? I felt her presence as a constant companion, tied up indistinguishably with the craving she had left in me, the addiction that I could not shake. Every day, I cursed myself for having thrown that vial to the floor. I replayed the scene, the shattering glass and the brilliant blue liquid flowing from it. What could my life have been if I could have prolonged that high? Might I, like Cassandra, have become fearless? Perhaps I could have become the pilot of my own ship, and driven it into a star without blinking.

Instead, I returned to work, knowing in my heart that I was unfit to perform the duties of a physician. I waited, in a state of paralysis, for someone to find out how unstable I was, to report me, to disgrace me. It was only a matter of time.

"Beverly."

I looked up, startled. It was half-past twenty-one-hundred hours, and I had thought I was the only person left in the medical building. In the dim light, I saw Jean-Luc Picard's tall silhouette in my doorway.

"What are you doing here?"

"Beverly, you look like you've seen a ghost."

"I – it's just been a hard week."

"You must have heard then."

I shook my head. "Heard what?"

"About Will."

I placed my shaking hand on the nearest metal surface to guard my balance.

"Will Riker? No. No, I haven't heard. What happened?"

"He's disappeared. There's been no sign of him for seventy-two hours. Starfleet has every search and rescue vehicle scouring the Alpha Quadrant. There is evidence that he may have been abducted."


	15. Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen

I sat across from him in a deserted briefing room, my head in my hands, unable to look at him.

"I can't believe this has happened," I whispered.

"Neither can I, Beverly. I haven't slept a night since I heard. You have to know that we are making this our top priority, and we won't rest until he is found."

"This must be some kind of nightmare."

"That is certainly what it feels like. I've no idea who could be responsible for this. There is a theory floating around that it could be some kind of coup from a militant group attempting to send Starfleet a message. But why now? And why _him_?"

At that, I looked upward with darting eyes. My blood ran cold, and my heart thudded in my chest. Slowly, the realization flooded through my body. I was paralyzed.

_I'll find another way to say thank you._

_Don't worry, Beverly._

_I'll find another way._

"Oh my God."

Jean-Luc rested his hand on mine.

"Beverly," he said, his voice deep with concern. "What is it? You're as white as a ghost."

He held my hand tighter, but I pulled away. His touch was like a puncture wound, deepening with every passing second.

"Please," I said, tears falling from my eyes, "don't do that. I don't deserve it."

"What in the world do you mean, Beverly?"

"Jean-Luc," I cried, burying my head in my hands once more, "I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. This is all my fault, all of it."

"Beverly, have you lost your mind? Talk to me, for heaven's sake! How could you be responsible?"

I felt the weight of my guilt crashing down, and as much as I wanted to hold it forever, to never let it go, I knew it was too late, that if I said nothing, I would be condemning an innocent man to death, or to some other fate I couldn't even conceive of.

"I feel so ashamed. I never wanted this to happen, and I never wanted anyone to ever know. But we were – we were more than just colleagues, more than friends."

I met his gaze once more, my chin trembling, tears streaming recklessly down my face. "Jean-Luc, we were lovers."

It was his turn to become deathly pale. "You – you and...Will?"

"No! No, not Will. Not Will."

He stared at me, uncomprehending. "Then who? Who are you talking about, Beverly?"

I drew in my shaky breath, praying that I could get the words out. "Deanna," I said, through my tears, through my shame. "I love Deanna, Jean-Luc. I've loved her for a long time. I know it's wrong, I know we've done a terrible thing. We both knew it, but we couldn't stop. And – and I don't know how it happened, but someone found out. They found out about us and...I know who did this_. I know who took Will_." My last words were a breathless whisper.

"Beverly, I – I am at a loss to understand any of this. Are you telling me that you and Deanna – you and Deanna were– you and Deanna Troi – all this time -"

Finally, he stopped saying her name, seeing that I was only continuing to weep. Perhaps he took some pity on me, perhaps the realization of our betrayal had disgusted him so that he could no longer speak of it.

"Beverly."

"I won't ask for your mercy, I know this is too far gone. I've paid my price, believe me. Please believe me, if you never believe anything I say again, that I have paid dearly for this, and will continue to, for the rest of my life. But you have to let me try to make this right. I can find him, as long as no one finds out about this. I know where to go, I know who I have to deal with."

"This is insane, Beverly. We have to go to Starfleet Intelligence immediately and you have to tell them everything you know."

"No!" I was almost screaming. "You don't understand, that would only put Will in greater danger. There are men in Starfleet who can't be trusted. I've seen things lately that I can't explain, that I can't even understand myself. But I know that I have to do this alone. If I don't, I can't even begin to imagine the consequences. These people are dangerous, Jean-Luc. They almost killed me, and they can kill him, and anyone else if they choose."

"You are frightening me, Beverly. How am I supposed to let you go off alone in search of him if it's as dangerous as you say it is?"

Somehow, the gravity of the situation had given me the courage I needed to recover myself and to make a decision. I straightened up, rose from my chair and looked my friend squarely in the eyes.

"Because if you don't, he'll die. And we will all have to live with the knowledge that we could have done something. Please, Jean-Luc, don't make this more difficult than it has to be. At the end of the day, this is my problem– I may not have caused it directly, but if I hadn't done what I did, none of this would be happening now. You have my word that I will bring him back. If it's the last thing I ever do, I will bring him back to you, and to Deanna."


End file.
